Madness in a Totalitarian Climate

Some things never change. Challenge the rules in a barbaric totalitarian state and you are deemed ‘mad’, confined in a mental institution and administered ‘therapy’ until you see the error of your ways. This was the case in the Soviet Union and it is also the case in Communist China

Local officials in China appear to be increasingly using forcible psychiatric treatment to silence critics, a leading expert said today amid claims that at least 18 complainants were held in a mental hospital in Shandong province against their will.

Authorities in Xintai district committed people who had pursued grievances ranging from police brutality to property disputes, according to the Beijing News, well known for its investigative journalism. Some were force-fed drugs.

“Until the early 90s, the practice of police forcibly sending people to mental asylums without justification was mainly carried out against political dissidents,” said Robin Munro, author of China’s Psychiatric Inquisition: Dissent, Psychiatry and the Law in Post-1949 China.
“Since then we have seen a very different trend – fewer are of that variety, and more and more, they are petitioners or whistleblowers exposing corruption, or simply persistent complainants.

“It’s a covert way to silence people … There is no accountability or oversight. The person disappears, effectively; and with them, whatever evidence they have compiled against officials.”
Once a police or civilian psychiatrist has certified someone as mentally ill, the patient loses all legal rights and can be held indefinitely.

From this, a reasonable case could be made for the proposition that the biggest lunatics at large in some societies are psychiatrists themselves.

A number of years ago, I had the misfortune of finding myself at a party infested with a preponderance of psychiatrists – a hospital party, I think. I had never encountered a larger number of misfits packed into such a confined area. I thought I might have some fun by bringing up the subject of R. D. Laing, a psychiatrist whose theories include such gems as: psychotic behaviour is a valid expression of distress; psychiatry is not a science; schizophrenia should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience; and psychiatrists themselves are responsible for the madness of many of their patients – hard to argue against that last point. If you know any psychiatrists, mention The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise to see how they react. I ended up having a wonderful time.